Cleaning functions may be provided to or incorporated with certain medical instruments to help ensure that the instruments are clean, free of obstructions, and can operate properly during a medical procedure. For example, microdebriders may be used in medical procedures to cut, resect, and/or remove tissue, bone, or other bodily materials. After a period of time, however, the tissue, bone, or other bodily materials may accumulate and obstruct the microdebrider. Endoscopes may be used in medical procedures to gain visual access into an internal location of a patient. While an endoscope is positioned within the patient, however, a distal viewing end of the endoscope may be exposed to blood, tissue, fluid, debris, etc., which may obstruct visual access into the internal location of the patient. Accordingly, to maintain a clean medical instrument during a procedure, irrigation fluid, suction, or both may be provided to or incorporated with the instrument (including microdebriders and endoscopes), which typically requires connecting various individual cables, tubes, lines, ports, etc. to the instrument. The various individual cables, tubes, lines, ports, etc. connected to the medical instrument may however interfere with a doctor or surgeon performing the medical procedure, which may undesirable add additional time and/or complications to the procedure. Also, by connecting various individual cables, tubes, lines, ports, etc. to the medical instrument, selective application of irrigation fluid, suction, or both may be difficult to control. Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a valve that can combine and connect various individual cables, tubes, lines, ports, etc., to a single access point on a medical instrument and provide selective fluid communication between one or more fluid sources and the medical instrument.
It may be further desirable to provide a valve that is sufficiently sized (i.e., in relative size and weight) so that the valve does not interfere with or burden a doctor or surgeon performing a medical procedure. Further yet, it may be desirable to provide a valve including a disk, an occluder, and/or a membrane to provide selective communication between two or more fluid lines. In other words, it may be desirable to have a valve including a moving, deformable, and/or deflectable disk, occluder, and/or membrane so that the valve can be made with fewer components and can made smaller and lighter than a piston or ball valve, for example. U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,337,470, 5,439,022, 5,354,267, 7,270,647, and U.S. Pat. Pubs. US2006/0264995, 2013/0289595 and US2009/0244223 disclose various examples of supplying multiple cables, tubes, lines, ports, etc. to a single access point on a medical instrument, all of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety for all purposes.